Massachusetts authorities apparently thought that asking nicely would suffice to keep secret their subpoena for information on a Twitter user involved with Occupy Wall Street. They thought wrong.

So when the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office sent its request to Twitter, its subpoena ended up in the inbox of the DA’s target, following a decision by Twitter to share it as part of its privacy policy.

The user in question goes by the handle @p0isAn0N, who last week posted the document in full on Scribd. Dated December 14, the subpoena requests IP address information about the accounts of @p0isAn0N, @OccupyBoston, as well as “Guido Fawkes” and two Twitter hashtags: #BostonPD and #d0xcak3.

At the bottom of the document, a Suffolk county assistant district attorney asked Twitter not to share the request with any of its users, since such an action could “impede the ongoing criminal investigation.” Twitter has since said it did not follow that request due to its privacy policy.

Oh, and now the ACLU is involved, since the DA’s office is trying to violate the anonymity of Twitter users, which is kind of a whole free speech no-no.

The moral of the story? If you’re going to surreptitiously try to collect the names of protesters, guys, just pay Facebook next time.

Considering this is Boston, it will only get weirder from here. The city government sometimes seems to believe it’s still 1950, and there isn’t a huge contingent of pissed-off hackers right on the other side of the river.

So we’re just not going to have Grand Juries anymore? No more John Doe investigations? Throw out a couple hundred years of jurisprudence because internet people don’t like it? This country is so fucked.